


A Thousand Words and Every One Your Name

by wrote_and_writ



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 04:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrote_and_writ/pseuds/wrote_and_writ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fancy Title for some fluff. roah + i asked you to be my model for photography and since when the fuck were you so photogenic holy shit AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Words and Every One Your Name

Noah sat on his bed and fiddled with the lens of his new Canon digital camera. It was a thing of beauty, a gift from his parents after his latest student art show. He peered idly through the viewfinder at the spartan sanctuary of his room.  


_Find the beauty in the ordinary,_ his professor had said. _Immortalize the familiar and the overlooked._  


Normally, Noah loved Professor Poldma. She was a witchy sort of woman, around the same age as his mother though she hadn’t a single maternal bone in her body. She was a genius with a camera, though, and she could help even the dullest student frame a decent shot.  


But sometimes she got this look, and Noah knew he was in trouble when she got the look before handing out their midterm assignment. Professor Poldma told the class that she despaired the loss of whimsy and the charm of of the unexpected that digital HD cameras had ushered in.  


She wheeled a cart laden with three large, plastic tubs in front of the classroom.  


“Come on,” she said. The students gaped at her as she pulled out vintage plastic cameras and bags of film. “I got these on eBay. Come on. Don’t be shy. First come, first serve.”  


Noah cursed the shyness that held him back. The Polaroid cameras were the first to go, followed by several Holgas and a Brownie with an enormous flashbulb. Noah was stuck with a battered black pinhole camera with a cracked plastic case. No doubt light leaks would ruin every shot. He only hoped he could spin the inevitable failure of his photos to develop into a tale of sufficient whimsy for Professor Poldma.  


He put his camera aside and picked up the pinhole camera. Something rattled inside.  


“The hell is that?”  


Noah turned to find his roommate Ronan standing in the doorframe.  


“My doom,” Noah said dramatically, holding out the black case.  


“Looks like a toy.”  


“It’s the shitty camera I’m supposed to use to create my midterm masterpiece.”  


“Cool.” Ronan dropped his bag, heavy with Latin textbooks, in the doorway and plopped down next to Noah. “Lemme see.”  


Noah handed it over. His fingers brushed Ronan’s, and a flutter of nerves shivered through him.  


Ronan didn’t seem to notice. He turned the camera over in his hands.  


“Where’s the little window to look through?”  


“It doesn’t have one.” Noah took the camera back. “This is a pinhole camera. Basically, you set it up, point it in the general direction of what you want to shoot, open this little flap, and hope for the best.”  


“Cool. What are you gonna shoot?”  


“I have no idea.”  


“Well,” Ronan said casually, “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.  


“I could take pictures of you,” Noah said cautiously.  


“Sure, Czerny, but I’ll tell you now. I’m only taking my clothes off if it’s tasteful.” He cracked an eye and gave Noah a devilish grin when he noticed the blush staining Noah’s cheeks.  


“Um, I don’t think that will be, I mean, I don’t--” Noah swallowed his stammer. “Although, the camera is already broken, so I supposed we could try. I wouldn’t ruin school equipment.”  


“Asshole,” Ronan said fondly.”When do you want to do this?”  


“Tomorrow morning? I need to do a little research to make sure I really know how to use this thing.”  


“I’m free til noon. Then I’ve gotta meet Parrish to go over our translation project.”  


“Sounds good.”  


Ronan elbowed Noah affectionately. “Cool. Now, I’m starved.” He scooted over until he could get off the bed. “I’m ordering pizza. You want anything?”  


Noah took his wallet from his pocket and handed Ronan a twenty. “The usual,” he said.  


Ronan waved it away, retrieved his books, and left Noah alone to think about anything other than Ronan and how he might look, tastefully nude, for Art.  


  


They woke early the next morning -- Ronan grumbled until Noah shut him up with coffee and pastries -- and drove out to Cabeswater Park. It was a perfect autumn morning, clear and cool, with the promise of one last, hot day before the air finally remembered it was closer to Christmas than it was to June.  


They hiked out a bit to one of Ronan’s favorite spots in the park, a clearing with a ring of large, broad stones, surrounded by aspens. He told Noah the spot reminded him of the standing stones in the field behind his grandparents’ farm in Ireland. Dew clung to the long grasses at the base of the stones, but the canopy of cloudless blue sky promised to burn it away before long.  


Ronan shook out an old plaid blanket and spread it on one of the boulders.  


“You want me here?”  


Noah looked up from the collapsible camp table he was trying to put together. Sunlight filtered through the tops of the trees. They had maybe half an hour of diffuse light before the sun cleared the treetops. The branches cast pleasing shadows on the stones and on Ronan, and stray beams of sunlight highlighted the sharp angles and planes of his body.  


Noah swallowed thickly.  


“Yeah, man, that’ll work. Gimme a minute to set up.”  


Ronan clambered onto the boulder and settled down cross-legged on the blanket. He leaned back on his hands, closed his eyes, and turned his face to the sun.  


Noah took his Canon from his bag and snapped a few shots.  


Ronan opened one eye when he heard the shutter click, but he just grinned. After two years rooming with Noah, he was used to Noah’s habit of taking photos of anything and everything.  


Noah put his digital camera on his bag and finished setting up the pinhole camera. He put a camp stool down behind the table and sat down.  


“Okay, so I’m going to try different exposure times, so once you’re set in a pose that’s comfortable, let me know, and I’ll start.”  


“I’m good like this for now,” Ronan said, basking like a cat in the patch of sun.  


“Okay. I’ll do a few minute long exposures and work up to a longer exposure, then try some different poses. I’ll say ‘start’ and ‘stop’ for each picture.”  


“You’re the boss.”  


“Yeah,” Noah said, his mouth twisting into a wry little smile. “I need to get that in writing.”  


Ronan blew him a little kiss and settled back into his pose.  


Noah took ten or so photos of that initial pose, going from short to long exposures, leaving the lens open for five minutes on the last picture. While the film captured this, Noah poked around the edges of the clearing, taking photos with his own camera.  


“Alright, are you ready to switch up?” he asked, closing the lens cover after the last photo.  


Ronan yawned and stretched. “Yeah, man.” He stood up and pulled his sweater and t-shirt over his head.  


“Uh, what the hell are you doing?” “Art, Czerny.” Ronan flashed him a mischievous grin.  


“We’re in a public park, Ronan.”  


“There’s no one around.” Ronan tossed his shirt at Noah and bent down to unlace his boots.  


“Ronan, if someone comes by, we’ll get arrested.”  


“No one’s gonna come out here, Noah.” He stripped off his jeans and stretched. Noah stared, transfixed, as Ronan’s muscles rippled under the tattoo that covered his back.  


He’d seen the tattoo plenty of times. Come to that, he’d seen Ronan naked, too. It happened with you lived with someone. But this was different. Ronan expected him to look. Ronan was allowing him to look. Through the lens of a camera, yes, but still. Noah had convinced himself he would never have any sort of intimacy with Ronan’s body, not even for Art.  


“Are you gonna gape at me, Czerny, or are you gonna give me some direction?”  


Noah snapped his gaze up to Ronan’s face, envious of the total ease with which Ronan owned his space in the world.  


“Yeah, um, okay.” Noah’s mind raced. He recalled a photography exhibit he’d attended last month and shamelessly stole ideas for the pose.  


“Okay. Okay. Um. Lie down. On your back.”  


Ronan tossed the blanket aside and draped himself across the rock, languid and so, so very naked.  


Noah’s cheeks burned.  


“This good?”  


Noah swallowed and gave himself a brief, yet stern lecture on professionalism. He set his camera down and went to Ronan, adjusting him delicately, bending Ronan’s right leg at the knee so Ronan wouldn’t be so...exposed...on film. He resisted the urge to trail his hands up Ronan’s torso -- all in the name of Art -- and arranged Ronan’s arms so they rested above his head.  


The sun was just about over the treetops, and it lit Ronan like a young god at the dawn of the world. A young god who sunburned easily and would be a nightmare to life with if Noah let that happen.  


Noah worked quickly, taking five shots with the pinhole camera and more than he cared to admit with the Canon -- for reference, of course.  


Then he had Ronan turn on his side -- “Other way! I want to take pictures of your tattoo, Ronan, Christ, not your dick!” -- and took ten more photos.  


He took photos of the rocks and trees as Ronan dressed.  


“You nearly done?” he asked, adjusting his watch. “I’ve gotta meet Parrish soon.”  


Noah’s traitorous heart clenched with jealousy, though he knew full well that Adam Parrish was devoted to his relationship with a boy called Gansey and a girl called Blue. Then he wondered if Adam and Gansey and Blue would pose for him sometime and then he told ronan he just had to take a quick walk into the trees to retrieve a lens cover.  


Ronan dropped Noah off at the Fine Arts building on his way to meet up with Adam. By sheer luck, Noah found a vacant dark room. Normally he waited a few days after a shoot to edit or develop his photos, but he was dying to see if a shitty, broken plastic camera picked up any of the raw vitality of Ronan Lynch. He locked the door, retrieved his iPod from his bag, queued up a playlist, put the iPod in his pocket so the light from the screen wouldn’t overexpose the photos, and got to work.  


This was Noah’s favorite part of photography. Sure, he loved manipulating digital image files. he had become known for ethereal and fantastic pictures, magical realism, images with heavily saturated colors and disconcerting subjects. But the process of developing film -- exposing the images, washing the paper in chemical baths and waiting, breathless, as the ghost of an image became more and more defined -- this is what real magic looked like to Noah Czerny.  


He forced himself to concentrate on the process, timing the chemical washes, then choosing a few frames to over or underdevelope, until he had a range of images of the who had become, unknown until a camera revealed it to him, the sun around which Noah orbited.  


“Well, fuck,” he muttered as he examined the still-wet photos, “this is extremely inconvenient.”  


He took down one print, an image of Ronan on his back. His body was in perfect focus, but his face was softened and slightly blurred. He must have turned his head while the picture was being taken. It was beautiful and unsettling, the perfect representation of Ronan Lynch.  


“Well. Fuck.”  


It was a goddamned problem, the fire that burned in Noah’s belly, a fire he thought he’d banked a long time ago.  


Ronan Lynch, beautiful, feral Ronan Lynch was a goddamned problem, and Noah had no idea if it was a problem he could solve.


End file.
